h the manager of her branch was a
delightful experience; she was almost bursting with importance, and his
courteous appreciation of his increasingly wealthy client was something
more than balm. It was a foretaste of the power of money. She had known
poor men respected, but not poor women; now the bank manager was giving
her respectful attention because she had fifteen hundred pounds.

'You might buy some industrials,' he said.

'Industrials? What are they?'

'Oh, all sorts of things. Cotton mills, iron works, trading companies,
anything.'

'Cement works?' she asked with a spark of devilry.

'Yes, cement works too,' said the manager without moving a muscle.

'But do you call them safe?' she asked, returning to business.

'Oh, fairly. Of course there are bad years and good. But the debentures
are mostly all right and some of the prefs.'

Victoria thought for a moment. Reminiscences of political economy told
her that there were booms and slumps.

'Has trade been good lately?' she asked suddenly.

'No, not for the last two years or so. It's picking up though. . . .'

'Ah, then we're in for a cycle of good trade. I think I'll have some
industrials. You might pick me out the best.'

The manager seemed a little surprised at this knowledge of commercial
crises but said nothing more, and made out a list of securities
averaging six per cent net.

'And please buy me a hundred P. R. R. shares,' added Victoria.

She could have laughed at the manager's stony face because he did not
see the humour of this. He merely said that he would forward the orders
to a stockbroker.

Victoria felt that she had put her hand to the plough. She was scoring
so heavily that she never now wished to turn back. Holt was every day
growing more dreamy, more absorbed in his thoughts. He never seemed to
quicken into action except when his companion touched him. He grew more
silent too; the hobbledehoy was gone. He was at his worst when he had
received a letter bearing the Rawsley postmark. Victoria knew of these,
for Holt's need of her grew greater every day; he was now living at Elm
Tree Place. He hardly left the house. He got up late and passed the
morning in the boudoir, smoking cigarettes, desultorily reading and
nursing the Pekingese which he now liked better. But on the days when he
got letters from Rawsley, letters so bulky that they were sometimes
insufficiently stamped, he would go out early and only return at night.
Then, however,